President Rodrigo Duterte disclosed late Tuesday night that he did not bother to dignify Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mention of extra judicial killings irritants and related human rights issues at the sidelines of the 31st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit. President Duterte described the brief exchange with Trudeau as “a personal and official insult” to him. “I said that I will not explain. It angers me when you are a foreigner and you do not know exactly what is happening in this country,” the president explained during a press briefing after the ASEAN Summit ended. “You don’t...

Police in the Philippines defended the country's ongoing and deadly war on drugs Tuesday as they accused the international media of overstating death tolls. The new data release comes amid widespread shock over US President Donald Trump's decision to invite Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to the White House, with many critics pointing to Duterte's deadly drug war. In an elaborately planned, three-hour forum in an upscale Manila hotel, officials said 2,679 suspected drug users and dealers died during legitimate police operations between July 1 and January 30. An additional 1,847 deaths between July 1 and March 31 are believed to...

Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the Gulf Cartel if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Matamoros’ “JA Espinoza.”MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — Raging shootouts between rival factions of the Gulf Cartel have rained gunfire on this border city. In just one of the shootouts, one police officer and six cartel gunmen died, according to official...

Baltimore’s top cop confirms what WJZ has been reporting – -almost 200,000 narcotics are on the streets of Baltimore, and police say they’re fueling deadly turf wars. [Snip] Police believe stolen prescription drugs are driving the violence sweeping the city. “There’s enough narcotics on the streets of Baltimore to keep it intoxicated for a year,” Commissioner Batts said. More than 175,000 units or doses of drugs were looted from 27 pharmacies and two methadone clinics during the April 27 riots. Almost half of those businesses haven’t even finished assessing what was stolen.

Two severed heads were dumped in front of a bank in the western Mexican state of Michoacán on Monday, days before a planned visit by Enrique Peña Nieto, the president, to the volatile region where he has launched a major security offensive. Though there was no confirmation of the identity of the victims, officials believe the murders in the town of Parácuaro were the work of the Knights Templar cartel seeking to dissuade potential informants.

The Mexican Congress has just passed a resolution calling upon the United States to facilitate the granting of asylum to Mexican citizens who claim they are escaping from violence. Due to widespread killings and attacks in the country, primarily due to drug trafficking, the Mexican Congress is admitting officially that they cannot protect their own citizens from other Mexicans. It figures, therefore, that the responsibility must now fall to the United States.

Mexico's government on Monday pledged to take control of a violent western state after days of fighting between masked vigilantes and members of one of the country's most powerful drug cartels. Since late last year, vigilante groups in the state of Michoacan have moved deeper into territory controlled by the Knights Templar cartel and they now are converging on Apatzingan, considered one of gang's main strongholds. The vigilantes' advance has raised the risk of a bloody urban battle in Apatzingan. Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong on Monday urged the vigilante groups to withdraw from the battleground so federal forces...

Apparently the drug cartels have not yet received Janet Napolitano's memo about the secure border. The Sinaloa cartel continues to use Chicago, IL and St. Louis, MO as distribution hubs in the Midwest as reported by Farrah Fazal for KSDK: "Sinaloa cartel members get drugs into the U.S. on ships in the Pacific Ocean, rafts across the Rio Grande River, semi trucks on highways and single engine planes across the Southwest border." The Mexican drug cartels move $50 billion in bulk product and bundled cash across the border each year, and have established supply lines, distribution networks and operational cells...

The woman mayor who was kidnapped and murdered by a Mexican drug gang pleaded with her attackers for her young daughter’s life, it emerged today. Maria Santos Gorrostieta, who had already survived two assassination attempts, was driving the child to school at around 8.30am when she was ambushed by a car in the city of Morelia. The 36-year-old was hauled from her vehicle and physically assaulted as horrified witnesses watched, according to newspaper El Universal. They described how she begged for her child to be left alone and then appeared to get into her abductors’ car willingly. The little girl...

A Zetas leader arrested in the streets of Nuevo Laredo is being accused of masterminding the Falcon Lake murder of American tourist David Hartley and the massacres in San Fernando. Mexican marines arrested Salvador Alfonso Martínez-Escobedo in Nuevo Laredo around 7 p.m. Saturday. Martinez-Escobedo, who goes by the nickname "La Ardilla" or "The Squierrel", is reported to be a regional commander for the Zetas drug cartel. Mexican Navy officials report he escaped from gun battle with marines that left one person dead in the San Agustin subdivision early Saturday morning. Marines found Martinez-Escobedo hours later in an SUV in the...

Photos of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s abandoned private island At the height of his power, Pablo Escobar was worth an estimated $3 billion (USD) and his Medellín Cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market. So he may have had a few extra dollars to throw around on a private island. In fact, many drug lords had luxurious villas on small islands off the coast of Cartagena, islands that have since been abandoned by their human occupants. Urban explorer and photographer Stefaan Beernaert, also known as Fotantje, has explored the islands off Catagena and photographed the so-called "Drug Islands."...

(CNN) -- Google's technology certainly can map out driving directions and organize e-mail (or even make cars drive themselves). But can its digital tools take down drug cartels? The company says it can, with your help. "We believe that technology has the power to expose and dismantle global criminal networks, which depend on secrecy and discretion in order to function," Google said in a blog post this week. "And for the past few months, we've been working with people fighting on the front line to gain a better understanding of what drives these networks and how they function." In coordination...

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said Saturday that he is open to sending American troops to Mexico to help battle drug cartels. ((snip)) Mexico's government, however, has been opposed to foreign forces in its territory.

The aol ticker feed provides the above headline, which, when clicked on, has the following: Mexico says key drug cartel figure arrested Updated: Sep 20, 2011 - 11:15AM Text Size ---- AP MEXICO CITY -The Mexican army says it has captured a key figure in the cult-like Knights Templar drug cartel that is sowing violence in western Mexico. Brig. Gen. Edgar Luis Villegas says Saul Solis Solis was captured Monday in the western state of Michoacan, where the cartel was born. It split from La Familia, a pseudo-religious drug gang known as a major trafficker of methamphetamine. Villegas said Tuesday...

Mexican officials are investigating a gruesome discovery south of the border in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. San Fernando residents first reported via Twitter on Wednesday morning that a mass 'narcograve' had been found in the Ejido La Joya. Mexico's Attorney General's Office (PGR) confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that they investigating a report of a mass grave in the San Fernando, Tamaulipas area. An agency spokesperson told Action 4 News that there is no formal report but federal officials are at the site investigating the crime scene. Official Confirmation The Tamaulipas Attorney General's Office (PGJE) reported that a total of 59 bodies...

Guadalupe, Mexico — Her uncle, the mayor who gave her the job nobody else wanted, warned her to keep a low profile, to not make too much of being the last remaining police officer in a town where the rest of the force had quit or been killed. But in pictures for local newspapers, Érika Gándara, 28, seemed to relish the role, brandishing a semiautomatic rifle and wearing a purple hoodie instead of a uniform. A patch covered an eye swollen from a bee sting. “I am the only police in this town, the authority,” she told reporters. Then, two...

Mexican soldiers captured a 14-year-old U.S. citizen suspected of being a drug gang hitman as he attempted to travel to the United States. Edgar Jimenez, known as "El Ponchis," worked for the South Pacific drug cartel in Morelos state, outside Mexico City, the army said Friday. The boy was caught late Thursday as he boarded a plane in the city of Cuernavaca in Morelos. He was travelling to the border city of Tijuana across from San Diego, California, with two of his sisters, one of whom is believed to be the lover of one of the cartel's bosses, the army...

MEXICO CITY — Yet another macabre mystery of Mexico's drug war — the presumed slaughter of 20 tourists in Acapulco — apparently has been solved by thugs who detained the killers, posted their confessions on the Internet, then murdered them and led police to the crime scene. Police were searching for two more bodies Thursday in a coconut grove near the Pacific Coast resort, where they had pulled 18 bodies from a shallow grave Wednesday. Though officials are waiting for DNA evidence or identification by relatives today, those in the grave are believed to be the tourists from neighboring Michoacán...

September 11, 2010: Lately, the Afghan government has not been as loud about reducing civilian casualties. Partly, that's because these casualties are at a historic low, and trying to drive them any lower will mean less effective operations against the Taliban and more dead Afghan and foreign troops. But the main reason for the reduction in anti-American invective is that the Taliban are having cash flow problems. In the last year, NATO forces have concentrated on doing as much damage as possible to the heroin production and smuggling operations. The Taliban provide security for the drug gangs, and the security...

El Cercado is a sleepy village in the foothills of the Sierra Madre. It is situated about half an hour's drive south of Monterrey, Mexico's third largest city. ... Four years ago I was lucky enough to spend a little time in El Cercado. My aunt Blanca and uncle Juan invited my mother and me to stay in their weekend retreat - a spacious old ranch, crammed with family bric-a-brac, with a terrace running the length of the house. We would sit in rocking chairs listening to the birds and contemplating the view. Each morning, before the sun was too...